So what do we get from the quick sound bite approach to life?  
For starters, we get more time for more quick sound bites!  
More significantly, we take a whole lot of risk when we let
others tell us what we should think… feel… do.  A meaningful
example would be how we get information needed to make
intelligent decisions about important or meaningful matters in
our lives.  

In our work lives, many if not most have grown to prefer top
line or bottom line results over details.  Since executives,
managers, and supervisors set the example of what good looks
like within the culture, it doesn’t take long for subordinates be
hehave in kind.  “Spare me the details” becomes a lifestyle up
and down the organization. This is easy to check out if you are
so inclined.  

Another place to look would be contracts for computer
applications or cell phone services.  They go on and on, written
in language specifically designed to encourage the consumer to
go to the “I accept” button quickly. We value short, crisp
language, and these contracts are anything but.  And we are
not discussing the legalese that very few consumers can
properly evaluate, such as insurance policies, mortgage
agreements, tax codes, or contracts of all sorts.  

Another example would be how we consume “news” in video or
print formats.  I had a friend many years ago who was a foreign
correspondent for a prestigious and particularly well-written
international newspaper.  This was just prior to the days of
CNN.  I remember how appalled David was with the popularity
of the new USA Today because its format was a collection of
brief bites with catchy titles.  Because it had almost no in-
depth reporting, He called it a “ten minute read on a good
day!”

In an ideal world, “news” is really information distilled and
interpreted from hundreds, thousands, and maybe even millions
of bits of data. Our passion for “getting to the point” and
“spare me the details” has all too often led to “information”
passed off as “News” with little or no supporting data.  My
friend David was prescient about what this would lead to.  I was
not!  Far too many societies/individuals have drunk the coolaid
of the unchallenged mind, and have grown to like it.  

Thomas Jefferson wrote that a “society
that wishes to be free and yet uneducated
expects what never was and never will be”.  
He was obviously calling for an informed civil
society, but it has a wider application. We
need to make room in our lives for
meaningful reflections based on a lifetime
commitment to personal education…finding
enough data we can translate into
information…immersing ourselves into other points of view, all
leading to informed decision-making.  

Health gurus have long written about the value of physical
stretching throughout our lives. This is a call for intellectual
stretching.  Start with meaningful reflections.  The minute we
stop learning for whatever “practical” reason is the minute we
become the manifestation of Eric Hoffer’s 1963 admonition:
“learners inherit the earth while the learned find themselves
perfectly equipped to inherit a world that no longer exists.”

Meaningful Reflections!  -Dr. Bill DeMarco  

Its use has the ability to capture the attention of business leaders so we can get to the “good stuff”.  In this case, the good stuff is to identify what’s required to bring about a high  performing business culture.  At my client meeting, we discussed about how, in my international research over the past decades, “treating people with dignity and respect” consistently correlated with sustainable high performing business cultures in a variety of business sectors.  It is a subset of what I call “Ethical Role Modeling”.  I spoke about this in a business radio interview nearly twenty years ago.  In more recent research,  it still has resonance.

My reflections and  client conversation on the merits of  ”treating people with dignity and respect” led me to an new insight.  Isn’t “treating people with dignity and respect” similar to the Golden Rule of “doing to others as you would have them do to you”? Interestingly over twenty of the worlds great religions, which account for over seventy-five percent of the world’s population, espouse fundamentally the same “Golden Rule“.  I know how, in our secular society, mixing religious with business values is frowned upon. BUT , maybe there is cause for thought when businesses as well as Buddists, Christians, Hindus, Jews, Muslims, Sikhs, and other beliefs espouse fundamentally the same  core value of “high performance”.

Meaningful reflections!  -Dr. Bill DeMarco